Between the Teeth
by Raptor3ggs
Summary: I know that just because we have a brittle peace now doesn't mean you'll resist doing like you always do: act on emotion instead of logic. I shouldn't be surprised, as impulse is what you do, but for once you should look at the bigger picture, Yusuke. You hold our fate in your hands and I can tell by that look on your face that you're going to do something idiotic with it.


The end of humanity came through a very selfless act on my part – reviving a child who had been killed in part due to his own selfishness and my own negligence. I knew at the time I was damning the rest of humanity as I did it, but my own guilty conscience seemed more important at the time.

I should have just left the boy dead. I should have just ignored the pang in my gut when I saw his limp body on the cave floor. But I couldn't – the combination of knowing I was instrumental in the cause of his demise and knowing I, in part, had pushed Sensui to the breaking point left me reckless to fix what I had done. I had thought, perhaps, by saving that boy's soul I would somehow save not only my own but Sensui's as well.

I was foolish. Naïve. But most of all I was being ridiculously selfish. I didn't want to rectify my sins for anyone's benefit but my own. I didn't want to live with the guilt knowing I had not only doomed my best Spirit Detective – my crowning achievement – and dare I say, my _friend – _to a lifetime of darkness, a lifetime of banishment. A lifetime of becoming the very kind of human who had repulsed him so far away from his own kind.

I had become arrogant in the wake of success my Spirit Detective program had with his predecessor – it was a brilliant idea. Who better to protect humanity than humans? And Kuroko Sanada, talented as she was and eager as she was _proved_ that it could be done – that humans could be relied on and could be trusted. Though I should have realized that Sensui and Kuroko were so different, that she could understand the gray of the world – of the _universe –_ and that he, strong and just as he was, could see humanity in one color: White. Bright, unstained, innocent white.

If I were being honest, reviving Amanuma did nothing to ease the guilt. Shinobu still died unchanged, and thanks to Itsuki I never had the time to converse with his soul. If I had, maybe I could understand a little more. Maybe it would become more than just speculation to me. Sensui had never seen the darkest parts of humanity. He was naïve, but not by choice. I kept him that way, thinking I was protecting him from a terrible truth that he didn't need to know. _This boy is a child,_ I had thought, _it's my responsibility to make sure he stays innocent._ In the end, I was the true naïve one. I was the one who couldn't handle the truth. I had thought that no one was destined to hunt demons as much as Sensui – I had thought his black and white view of good and evil was the judgment we needed. I should have realized before that he wasn't stable. That he was close minded not out of stance or pride, but out of ignorance.

No. The fact that the boy lived did nothing to change what I had already done. I had cursed myself many times over the years because of it – if I had only _ignored_ the guilt, pushed back that insufferable selfishness of mine and that damnable pride. If I had acted with reason, I could have stopped Sensui then. The Ma Fu Kan would have trapped him, and that tunnel. It would have released a Kekkai so strong that the human and demon worlds would probably never interact again.

My _father_ – as the years pass and I learn more about his betrayal I hate calling him that more and more – had been lying to me my whole life. The demons he charged me to protect humanity from had been his doing the whole time. I must have looked like a fool to him – rushing to defend the helpless humans against the much stronger threat. Against their predators. In a messed up way I suppose I thought of the human race collectively as my pets. I was to take care of them and protect them, make sure they passed away when their time came and not when they were eaten by blood thirsty demons. They were my responsibility. At the time, I had thought my father had granted me this task to see if I could one day overtake him and rule Spirit World in his stead – instead I had come to realize that it was merely for appearances. He needed it to seem like someone was fighting the good fight. In all my years I've never felt more useless than when it all came to light. Everything I had done – everything I had been through – everything I had put those _kids_ through – was all a play. Kuroko suffered. Sensui suffered. Yusuke suffered. Those children had to deal with the darkest parts of existence – _half_ of which were all orchestrated by 'the good guys.'

I was only grateful that Sensui was gone long before my father had been exposed. The hate the realization could have generated would more than likely have driven Shinobu to destroying the human world himself. And he _could_ have. Easily. My father couldn't have stopped him – and this _power between my teeth_ had been proved all but useless.

Part of me thought maybe Sensui had realized this already – that his role as protector of the human race was, in reality, insignificant on all levels. As long as my father had a say, there would always be demons to fight. There would never be peace.

I had come to hate all I had stood for. It didn't take long. I wanted to work to fix what my father had done – rewrite the history between humans and demons for the better. I had no idea how utterly lucky I was to come across Yusuke Urameshi.

Sensui was a failure, and in my youth I had yet to blame myself for it. He was a human, it was to be expected he would have his flaws. They came with so many personalities that surely I could find someone so opposite. I stuck with what I knew worked – Kuroko had been almost as snarky and impulsive as Yusuke, but she still took time to process thoughts before turning them into actions. Yusuke, well…didn't.

Ironically, it was my father that suggested – though offhandedly – that I find someone who didn't think so much. I don't think he expected me to take it to heart, but he must have jumped for joy when he realized I had (though not literally, I think if my father jumped it would cause an earthquake so immense they'd be able to feel it in Hell). Yusuke could never go the same route as Sensui – he was too self-absorbed. He didn't care about anything outside of his own world. He would never delve into my father's workings and realize what was going on – and a part of me thinks Yusuke wouldn't have cared so long as he got a good fight out of it.

However it was through Yusuke that everything changed. I could feel it, looking back. From the moment he defeated Suzaku I could feel my father's anxiousness. I could feel the change coming through – the outlook for humanity had never looked so promising. Yusuke was the defender I had wanted Sensui to be, I just didn't realize it.

Sensui? He followed orders. He killed demons. He didn't ask questions and he didn't talk back. My father probably loved that about him – but he was smart. And he was capable of many things. Yusuke didn't seem like more than an average street kid at first – but there was a difference. He _learned. _He _did _ask questions and _did_ open his views from the answers he got. Sensui would have just killed Kurama, he wouldn't have trusted him and he certainly wouldn't have risked his life to save Shiori Minamino. He would have slain the demon on the spot and patted himself on the back for ridding his mother of such a parasite.

But Yusuke… he listened. He trusted Kurama and through him created an ally that would last a lifetime. Yusuke had that ability – that pure, honest personality that drove him to make friends with anyone who took the time to try. Yusuke knew from the beginning that not every demon was evil – and he knew through Hiei that they were redeemable. It was at the very start of his journey that my father realized he was a threat to him, and he would have looked for any way to get rid of him. If Yusuke hadn't have gathered his own reputation, I'm certain my father would have thrown stronger and stronger demons at him to _take care_ of the problem.

Yusuke wasn't the only one who learned, though. I too began to realize that things weren't what they seemed – as Yusuke met and befriended more demons, and _I _met and befriended more demons, it became clear that things weren't so cut and dry and that I had been even more childish than Sensui had – demons were not the threat they appeared to be. They weren't the blood thirsty, stupid animals I had been told they were for my entire existence.

Don't get me wrong – there are demons who feast upon humans. But it took Yusuke saying it for me to realize that they can't _help _they were born that way. Sure as one cannot help their allergy to peanuts or chocolate, demons couldn't help that they needed to consume humans to survive. It was life or death for them – and, for the majority of those, there were the cultivated humans to handle that. They were alive, but had no soul and no feelings, created solely for sating the need. And it worked just fine. There were complaints about the taste, but it curbed the appetite and necessity to kill for food.

But that was just a fraction of demons – there were many more that didn't even care to bother themselves with the human world, let alone destroy it. One of the strongest demons in _existence_ even said she cared more about keeping the demon world the way it was, separate from human world and untouched. If Sensui's plan had succeeded, I had to wonder how much of a threat there really was. The lower class demons would come through, of course, but they could easily have been handled by Yusuke or the SDF.

I experienced the same turn around that Sensui had – black and white turned to gray and all around me there were unanswered questions. I had been alive for centuries and never thought to ask why we hated demons so – why we had never tried to make peace or reason with them. Why was it so important to kill the ones we could and _why _had we known so little about them?

I call those my _stupid years _and try not to look back at them so often.

When my father found out about Yusuke's ancestry I can only imagine the elation – Yusuke had practically solved the problem of his existence for him just by being born. Most would have thought that it was a done deal then – Yusuke would have to be executed and his body destroyed to protect the interests of the human world. To have such a potentially powerful demon lose among humans would be the best way for my father to but the nail in the proverbial coffin – a danger they could all have unified against and finally proven once and for all that there was a purpose behind the totalitarian command. But boy did that backfire on him.

Yusuke not only revived and inherited Raizen's demon strength – he was completely in control of himself (aside from that minor possession incident, but I'm fully confident that Raizen would never have harmed any human) and he retained his desire to fight Sensui and protect the human world.

No wonder my father agreed to let Yusuke go to Demon World. Better to toss Yusuke with the demons and forget about him entirely, lest he prove to be an upstanding citizen with the strength to protect humanity from any demon threat my father could conjure. There were no demons weak enough to brainwash yet strong enough to kill Yusuke anymore – the charade was up, and it was easy to follow the trail of lies leading farther back than I would ever want to admit.

The upheaval was scarily easy. My father was no weak man, but like me he was not a fighter. Those under his power knew this – they also assumed I had the entirety of Demon World at my back when I returned from the tournament there. They assumed Yusuke was still _my_ spirit detective, still _my _henchman, and still _mine_ to command. And by extension, I could have hundreds of demons –stronger than any A class warrior my father had – to force the transition.

Of course, that's all lies but I wasn't going to tell them that at the time. I made it clear that Yusuke was his own person and I had no control – and never did – over his actions and decisions. I found out that most denizens of Spirit World assumed that _I_ had planned Yusuke's course of action – that _I_ was behind the revolution that sparked the demons to hold a tournament and change centuries of tradition. I had to laugh. The look on their faces when I told them it was a selfish action on Yusuke's part was unlimitedly satisfactory. But the change was done and I was in command. My father's crimes and lies were out in the open for everyone to see, and if they had known I had nothing to do with the events that sparked centuries of peace my own revolution would have died as a spark.

Thanks to Yusuke opening my eyes, I realized that it was possible to coexist – not only just demons and humans, but those of us who hid away in Spirit World, too. There was no need for war or violence. In reality, no one seemed interested in wide scale destruction – or at least, none that were strong enough to go through with it were. There are those who tried from time to time to shift the balance again, but they're always shot down. It's as if we've all come to realize that peace is easier than war.

Enki proved vital in this transition. He was willing to keep on contact with me and we were able to communicate regularly. Misconceptions I had about demons that had been piling for hundreds of years were cleared up with just a few hours of conversation. I hated my ignorance, I was ashamed at the things I had put others through because of it.

After Enki, there was a three year period where Yomi – former king of Gandara – was in charge. He really surprised me. I had expected the worst from him, and if he had been the first one to win the tournament instead of Enki I think it would have been much different. But his travels seemed to humble him, and he was more than willing to not only stay with the three year term but go through the same measures as Enki did to maintain peace between us all.

I admit to growing complacent. Decades passed where there were no major threats at all – nothing on the scale of Sensui or even someone as troublesome as Toguro. That's not to say there weren't issues – religious sects often tried to take command of Spirit World and sometimes almost succeeded, and there were of course other forms of terrorism and battles in the other worlds, but other than that… nothing. Peace.

I should have paid more attention. I should have realized that just because something _seemed_ stable, didn't mean it was. Sensui was a prime example of _that._ I knew there would come a time when Demon World would be run by someone unwilling to listen to me, unwilling to communicate, and unwilling to bend.

And wouldn't you know it; it was the one person I could always rely on to be a pain in my ass.

The end of humanity came through a very selfless act on my part – reviving a child who had been killed by selfless act of his own. If I had never brought Yusuke Urameshi back to life, none of this would have happened. I would still be a dumb kid ordering demons to be killed for crimes they didn't have a choice to commit. If I had never brought Yusuke Urameshi back to life, we would never have come to known this tentative peace. If I had never brought Yusuke Urameshi back to life, perhaps I would still have enough power in my Ma Fu Kan save us from this dark time.

But if I had never brought Yusuke Urameshi back to life, this dark time wouldn't have come in the first place.

* * *

**AN: **S-so I rewatched Yu Yu Hakusho again and I had an idea for a story. I'm sorry to my Work For It readers who are waiting for the next chapter – _especially you Black-Megallica-Shirt, _I can feel your glare through the screen already. I'll update the other soon, but decided to lay this one out.

One thing I've always wondered: What were those _dark days_ Koenma was saving his power for? And what exactly does it mean to be responsible for having power between the teeth, but not enough to save us all?

This story will update _extremely slow._ And wow am I sorry for that – I have way too much on my plate to balance right now – Work For It, a 35-piece art commission, trying to start school, trying to find a place to stay after this vacation, not to mention finding a _job_ and getting a license and – w-well – you guys shouldn't procrastinate on the important stuff, okay kids? Get your license as soon as you're old enough, prepare for college while you have the resources, and _don't_ do the thing I did that I'm not going to tell you I did. You won't necessarily regret it, but you'll waste a lot of time having no progress in life.

On that note, I'd really appreciate a review on this one. Koenma is a character I find hard to write, and I'm worried that perhaps it doesn't come across well. Not only that, I was a little more conscious about some technique and I'd like to know if this was easy to read and comprehend! Thanks in advance guys, you're the best!


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